I remember touring Indiana and the Midwest with my seminars and one of my university chums, an ex-ballplayer as it turned out, was talking about guys who get out of shape.

Of course, that wasnt me, at least thats what I thought, but he did offer a standard by which to distinguish the truly fat from the slightly puffy:

Can you stand with your feet together, bury your chin in your chest, gaze down and see your feet?

Or, is your gut in the way?

It didnt take too many years on the road, with its sedentary ways and rich food and drink to put me into the I Cant See My Feet Club. I was, for lack of a better term, shocked when I connected his definition to my midsection.

But, happily, there is a way back from tubbiness, if youre willing to work at it.

Heres the formula that worked for me. I call it attacking the killer Bs:

(1) Cut out the booze.

(2) Cut out the beef.

(3) Cut out the bonbons (sweets and desserts).

Each of these moves is worth at least five pounds of weight loss, or 15 pounds, total.

Youll probably drop this load within six months, or less.

Of course, exercise is the next part of the equation. If you jog a couple of miles a day, I assure you that youll drop a minimum of five more pounds, and maybe more.

Do some abdominal exercises, but I dont like crunches. I use twists.

Stand with your feet apart, lift your arms as if youre an airplane, move to the left, then to the right, sucking in your gut each time. You can breathe when you wish. I do it, every two or three sets of twists.

How many should you do? I do them in sets of 100, and do 500 to 1,000 per day.

Just the twists, apart from any dramatic dietary or exercise commitments, enable me to tighten my belt after several weeks.

But if you can do the entire package, its not unrealistic to go from 250 to 200, or less, over the course of a year. Ive accomplished that, and then some.

And now, yes, I CAN see my feet!